CBS affiliates see Twitter accounts hijacked; Password security in focus

April 21, 2013

Two-factor authentication is in the spotlight again after the Twitter accounts for three CBS brands -- 60 Minutes, 48 Hours and a Denver news affiliate -- were hijacked and later suspended this weekend. The episodes add to a long list of media outlets and big companies that have been compromised in recent months. So why don’t more people use two-factor authentication, a more demanding method of accessing an account than a password-only process? The answer: Laziness or friction, depending on how you want to think of it. In enterprises, two-factor relies on hardware tokens that generate passcodes that are valid for just moments and must be entered along with the usual password. Consumer Web services such as Google or Facebook will send a one-time unique passcode to a user’s mobile device, either as a text message or in Apple’s case, to an iPhone or iPad via the Find My iPhone app's notification feature. Without that code, you can’t login. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2036041/cbs-affiliates-see-twitter-accounts-hijacked-password-security-in-focus.html#tk.rss_all